Birkenfels Castle (Alsace)

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Birkenfels Castle (Alsace)
Birkenfels castle ruins, view from the south

Birkenfels castle ruins, view from the south

Creation time : circa 1260
Castle type : Hilltop castle
Conservation status: ruin
Geographical location 48 ° 25 '46.5 "  N , 7 ° 23' 2.5"  E Coordinates: 48 ° 25 '46.5 "  N , 7 ° 23' 2.5"  E
Height: 675  m above sea level NN
Birkenfels Castle (Bas-Rhin Department)
Birkenfels Castle

The ruins of Burg Birkenfels ( French Château du Birkenfels , more rarely Château de Birkenfels ) are two kilometers southwest of the Odilienberg in the Alsatian municipality of Ottrott .

The hilltop castle was built by the Be (r) ger family and is one of a total of nine fortifications that are located on just a few square kilometers around the Odilienberg. After the Beger family died out, Emperor Karl V gave the imperial fiefdom to his Vice Chancellor Matthias von Held , who sold it to the Joham von Mundolsheim family in 1537. The castle was abandoned in the second half of the 16th century . After the Thirty Years' War it finally fell into ruin before it became the property of the town of Obernai ( German Oberehnheim ) on whose territory it stood during the French Revolution . The town still owns it today, but has placed the complex in the care of the Association pour la Conservation du Patrimoine Obernois , an association dedicated to the preservation of monuments around Obernai.  

The castle, which used to be known as Bergfels , Bergfeldschloss and Birkwaldschloss , is now also known for short as Le Birkenfels ( German  for Birkenfels ). It has been under monument protection as Monument historique since November 16, 1984 and is freely accessible.

location

The castle ruins stand on a sandstone rock at an altitude of 675  m above sea level. NN in the hinterland of the central Vosges and thus had hardly any strategic value. In addition, the facility did not include any surrounding land or supply yards. It probably had a protective function for the forest or could have controlled the high road running east and south of the castle rock from the Odilienberg over the Champ du Feu to the Bruchetal . Only about 1.2 kilometers to the north are the ruins of Dreistein Castle , from which it is just as far to the ruins of Hagelschloss . The castle Kagenfels located northwest just over two kilometers from Birkenfels away, and to the southeast which is found in around three kilometers from Burg Landsberg .

description

The core of the small complex consists of the remains of a residential building , with a pentagonal keep built in front of it on the southern attack side . Birkenfels thus corresponds in its constellation to the typical defense standard of the 13th century. To the east of the two buildings is the area of ​​the former outer bailey . The entire complex was protected on the south side by a very shallow, probably unfinished neck ditch . The red sandstone on the rock was used as building material . In the immediate vicinity of the ruins there are still two quarries from the castle construction site, among other things, the rock that was left over from the construction of the southern neck ditch was used. The door and window frames are made of stone .

A round arch portal in late Gothic forms on the south side of the complex provides access to the castle . In the past it was perhaps only accessible via a drawbridge . After crossing the gate , the visitor stands in the area of ​​the former outer bailey from the second half of the 15th century. The 32-meter-long area is surrounded by a ring wall made of quarry stone with a battlements at the end , which had a parapet and battlements . On the north side there is a small side gate that leads to a terrace . This could once have been a garden.

View of the residential building from the southeast

A pointed arched gate on the first floor of the building provided access to the three-story residential building of the castle . Two underneath corbels once supported a wooden porch. This was replaced in the second half of the 15th century or in the first half of the 16th century by a two-storey, tower-like square building made of stone, to the south side of which a ramp carved into the rock led to a drawbridge. At the same time, this square building protected the gate in the northern curtain wall of the outer bailey. Today only the lower, reconstructed part of it remains. The ground floor of the residential building served as a warehouse and for defense purposes, as evidenced by the high slits on both long sides. The upper floors housed the living quarters of the castle rulers. The outer walls are still 14 meters high today and 1.8 meters thick on the ground floor. At the top, they taper by around 20 centimeters per floor. The top was formed by a battlement, of which small remains of the parapet have survived. Long above the entrance gate there is a weir bay whose console stones have been preserved. The south and west walls are clad on the outside with humpback ashlars, while the north and east walls are made of rectangular ashlar. On all sides of the upper floors there are rectangular double windows with simple central supports, but with the exception of one copy, all of these are no longer original, but copies from the 19th century. Many windows are in arched niches with benches. Inside, the building is around 19 meters long and around 6.5–9 meters wide. On both floors there was only one room with a fireplace, of which small remains have been preserved on the interior walls. The other rooms were heated by tiled stoves . The walls of the building show traces of a major fire.

A pentagonal keep is in front of the residential building on the endangered south side . Its brickwork made of humpback blocks with pincer holes still stands up to a height of eight meters and is thus lower than the residential building. Based on the interlocking stones in the higher sections, it becomes clear that the tower was once planned higher, but was never completed. Another indication of this is the lack of access. This was obviously planned over the battlements at roof level of the residential building. Birkenfels is the only castle in Alsace for which the keep is known to have never been completed. In the middle of its three-meter-thick south wall there is a toilet in the thickness of the wall. Because of the enormous thickness of the wall, the interior of the keep is quite small, measuring only around 4.5 meters by 2.8 meters.

What is noticeable about the castle complex is that when it was built, comfort was given priority over defense. The defensive elements are not very pronounced for a late medieval system, for example the keep is on the unsafe attack side south of the residential building, but only partially covers it. On the south side, the hall even has large double windows on the upper floors.

history

Since there are only a few documents about Birkenfels Castle, the history of the complex is based not only on contemporary documents, but also on building surveys and excavation results .

The castle was first mentioned in documents in 1289, when King Rudolf von Habsburg awarded the “Bergfels im Bann zu Ehenheim” to Burkhard Beger (“Burckart den wiser Beger”), a ministerial of the Bishop of Strasbourg , with the consent of the citizens of Obernai . The Beger are attested as important Strasbourg servants from 1200 onwards. In the no longer preserved and only partially handed down document it was stipulated that the feudal man had to pay a pound of wax to the Liebfrauenkapelle in Obernai every year, because the castle was illegally destroyed by Burkhard's father Albrecht Wisseberger , probably at the behest of Bishop Walter von Geroldseck Soil of the city has been built. Research considers something like this to be possible only for the period of the interregnum , since the Strasbourg bishop was only in fact ruler of the lands around Obernai and Mount Odilien, which actually belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, from 1246 to 1262 . After Konrad III. von Lichtenberg had been elected Bishop of Strasbourg in 1273 and Rudolf I was elected King, the situation between the bishopric of Strasbourg and the empire relaxed again, since Konrad was known as a friend of the Habsburgs . Most of the research dates the construction of the castle to around 1260, only Charles-Laurent Salch (see literature ) suspects that the complex was only built between 1285 and 1289. The reason he gives the similarly sounding loan agreement signed in 1285 for Kagenfels Castle, which was built under the same circumstances. He assumes that an official loan would have taken place earlier for Birkenfels, if the castle had already existed at that time.

The castle ruins on a watercolor by Emanuel Friedrich Imlin from 1815

After it was first mentioned, there is nothing left in the tradition about the castle for a long time. It was not until 1434 that it was found in a document as “die zarge Birkenveltz”. There it is mentioned as a fiefdom of Caspar Beger and his brothers and confirmed as an imperial fiefdom, but the choice of words suggests that it was in ruins at that time. Based on the traces of fire found inside the residential building, it is assumed that the complex burned down in the 13th or 14th century and was not rebuilt until 1434. Excavations in the northern part of the outer bailey, however, brought numerous archaeological finds to light that show that the castle was used intensively in the 15th century, although there is no material that can be dated earlier. The finds, in combination with the remaining wall remains, show that the castle was rebuilt and repaired in the 15th century. Thomas Biller and Bernhard Metz (see literature ) suspect that the castle's history went as follows: Beginning around 1260, the complex was a far advanced shell in spring 1262. After the Strasbourg bishop had to accept a defeat against the troops of the Strasbourg citizenship in the battle of Hausbergen in March of this year , the Strasbourgers first devastated Obernai and then sent a delegation to the castle construction site of Birkenfels to start a fire there too. Since the Beger family initially neither had the opportunity nor was interested in further construction, Birkenfels Castle remained a shell ruin until the early 15th century. Only then did the owners have the facility repaired and continued to build, but without ever completing the keep. The long time it was in ruins would also be a possible reason why the castle did not appear in documents for around 150 years. As early as 1465, the Beger no longer resided on Birkenfels themselves, but had the complex managed by their Burgvogt Fritsche von Nideck . Around 1470–1477 they gave it as an after-fief to Emmerich Ritter.

In 1521 the feudal rights of the Beger family were confirmed again by Emperor Charles V. When she died out in the male line with Matthias the Nonsensical in 1532, the emperor withdrew the completed imperial fief and gave it to his vice-chancellor Matthias von Held. He sold the castle just five years later to the Strasbourg patrician Conrad Joham von Mundolsheim, whose family remained the owners until the French Revolution. But even she did not live in the complex herself, but had it managed by bailiffs. In the second half of the 16th century, Birkenfels was completely abandoned and abandoned as a residence. In the period that followed, the buildings fell into disrepair and were used as a quarry by the residents of the area. The castle is no longer listed on the Alsace map drawn up by Daniel Specklin up to 1576. During the revolution, the ruins became the property of the town of Obernai, which still owns them today.

The Société pour la Conservation des monuments historiques d'Alsace ( German  Society for the Conservation of the Historic Monuments of Alsace ) had security work carried out on the ruins in 1869. In 1973, the city of Obernai placed them in the care of the Association pour la sauvegarde de l'architecture médiévale (ASAM) ( German  Association for the Rescue of Medieval Architecture ), which carried out excavations in the northern third of the outer bailey until 1979 and restored the curtain wall as well as the access ramp and carefully reconstructed the entrance tower of the residential building. In 1984 the Association pour la Conservation et la Rénovation du Château du Birkenfels (today Association pour la Conservation du Patrimoine Obernois ) was founded to look after the castle.

literature

  • Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300) (= The castles of Alsace. Architecture and history. Volume 3). Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-422-06132-0 , pp. 125–130.
  • Jean Braun: Les châteaux de la forêt d'Obernai. Le château de Birkenfels. In: Annuaire de la Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Dambach-la-Ville, Barr, Obernai. Volume 8. Barr, Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Dambach-la-Ville, Barr, Obernai 1974, ISSN  0990-2473 , pp. 31-34.
  • Guy Bronner, Bernadette Schnitzler: Ottrott. Château de Birkenfels. In: Roland Recht (Ed.): Le Guide des châteaux de France. Bas-Rhin. Hermé, Paris 1986, ISBN 2-86665-024-7 , pp. 119-120.
  • Georges F. Heintz: Notes on the ruins of the castle of Birkenfels près du Mont Ste-Odile. In: Annuaire de la Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Dambach-la-Ville, Barr, Obernai. Volume 19. Barr, Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Dambach-la-Ville, Barr, Obernai 1985, ISSN  0990-2473 , pp. 53-65.
  • Nicolas Mengus, Jean-Michel Rudrauf: Châteaux forts et fortifications médiévales d′Alsace. Dictionnaire d′histoire et d′architecture . La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 2013, ISBN 978-2-7165-0828-5 , p. 39.
  • Bernhard Metz: Birkenfels. In: Encyclopédie de l'Alsace. Volume 2. Publitotal, Strasbourg 1983, pp. 662-665.
  • Charles-Laurent Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts d'Alsace. Alsatia, Strasbourg 1991, ISBN 2-7032-0193-1 , pp. 46-49.

Web links

Commons : Burg Birkenfels  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. a b First entry of the castle ruins in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on September 21, 2015.
  2. a b Castle history on a private website , accessed on September 21, 2015.
  3. a b Birkenfels Castle on montjoye.net , accessed on September 27, 2019.
  4. C.-L. Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts d'Alsace. 1991, p. 46.
  5. a b c d e f T. Biller, B. Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 125.
  6. a b c Information on Birkenfels Castle on the website of the Association des châteaux forts d'Alsace , accessed on September 27, 2019.
  7. ^ T. Biller, B. Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 130.
  8. photos-alsace-lorraine.com , accessed on September 22, 2015.
  9. a b Dossier on the castle ruins from the monument inventory, p. 1 (PDF; 10.3 MB)
  10. a b c d Dossier on the castle ruins from the inventory of monuments, p. 2 (PDF; 10.3 MB)
  11. ^ T. Biller, B. Metz: The early Gothic castle building in Alsace (1250-1300). 1995, p. 129.
  12. ^ A b G. Bronner, B. Schnitzler: Ottrott. Château de Birkenfels. 1986, p. 120.
  13. a b Information about the castle on autour-du-mont-sainte-odile.overblog.com , accessed on September 22, 2015.
  14. a b Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: Interdisciplinary collaboration between historian and architect to research the medieval aristocratic castle, illustrated using Alsatian examples. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau (Hrsg.): Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1984/86. Konkordia, Bühl 1988, p. 178.
  15. a b Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: Interdisciplinary collaboration between historian and architect to research the medieval aristocratic castle, illustrated using Alsatian examples. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau (Hrsg.): Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1984/86. Konkordia, Bühl 1988, p. 172.
  16. a b c C.-L. Salch: Nouveau Dictionnaire des Châteaux Forts d'Alsace. 1991, p. 48.
  17. Information about the castle ruins on the website of the Association pour la Conservation du Patrimoine Obernois , accessed on September 22, 2015.
  18. Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: Interdisciplinary collaboration between historian and architect to research the medieval aristocratic castle, illustrated using Alsatian examples. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau (Hrsg.): Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1984/86. Konkordia, Bühl 1988, pp. 178-179.
  19. Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: Interdisciplinary collaboration between historian and architect to research the medieval aristocratic castle, illustrated using Alsatian examples. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau (Hrsg.): Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1984/86. Konkordia, Bühl 1988, p. 177.
  20. Thomas Biller, Bernhard Metz: Interdisciplinary collaboration between historian and architect to research the medieval aristocratic castle, illustrated using Alsatian examples. In: Alemannisches Institut Freiburg im Breisgau (Hrsg.): Alemannisches Jahrbuch 1984/86. Konkordia, Bühl 1988, p. 175.
  21. Second entry of the castle ruins in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French), accessed on September 22, 2015.